Flash in the Pan

• Get the timing right -- one of the advantages that a good cafe has over most home brewers is an espresso machine with dual boilers. That allows the steam and coffee brewing to occur simultaneously at the different required temperatures so everything finishes at once. But unless you're planning to drop a lot on the mechanics, your machine isn't capable of doing this. What I do is:
  
  
  1. put the porta-filter into place without grounds
  2. run a shot of water through to warm it
  3. replace the porta-filter and set the machine to steam
  4. when the machine is up to temperature, remove the porta-filter and dump the water
  5. grind the coffee
  6. dose and tamp the porta-filter
  7. place the porta-filter onto the espresso machine
  8. steam the milk
  9. change the temperature and immediately brew the coffee
  10. pour the coffee and the milk into the cup
  
  This is not the way purists would do it, because you're letting the grounds sit too long, but I'm reasonably happy with the results, and only a few coffee places I've been to can do demonstrably better.


• Press hard enough on the grounds -- It is all too easy to think you're tamping the grounds when all you're doing is providing enough pressure for a therapeutic massage on an amoeba. Check this site and you'll see that "enough" means upwards of 30 pounds, followed by 20 pounds as you rotate the tamper to smooth out the coffee surface.


• Warm the cup -- Nothing like putting hot coffee into a really cold cup to defeat much of what you've just stood on your head to accomplish. Run some hot water (or the steam wand) inside the cup to warm the surface.


• Be cheap in equipment -- Any purists have just fainted. I'm being deliberately provocative, but serious. Forget all the it-grinds-brews-steams-the-milk-all-on-time-and-drives-you-to-work fancy equipment. I've had a chance to test many machines and keep going back to the Barrista I got from Starbucks years ago. It's one of the cheapest on the market and will give some of the most dependable results. That is, if they still sell it. (It was built by another company.) If you're going to splurge, do so on the grinder, not the brewer. Getting the grounds right is probably the most important thing equipment can do, and a good grinder is far less expensive than a good espresso machine.


• Be restrained on the milk -- One of the biggest mistakes I was making was using too large a mug and adding too much milk. A normal coffee mug is what you want, with just enough milk to bring the mix to the brim. Less milk means more concentrated coffee flavor.


• Get good coffee -- This shouldn't even need mentioning, but it does. Find a coffee place somewhere that does the best latte and espresso you can find and ask what they use. I've tried a few different types. Danesi Gold are good beans, but do come in from Italy in kilogram packages (2.2 pounds), which is a lot of coffee to have on hand. I would keep them in a container that I'd vacuum seal. These days I buy locally roasted beans, which travel less (lower carbon impact) and are fresher, allowing me to buy in smaller quantities.


• Get good milk-- I have it on strong authority that the right milk makes a big difference in texture of foam. High protein milk (locally we have some available from Jersey cows) works best. My food science guess is that more protein molecules means a greater density of bubble-forming material and, hence, smaller bubbles, which means finer foam.

Labels: coffee, espresso, latte, technique

Posted by Erik Sherman @ 6:43 AM Permalink